490 The Harmony of Creation. 
Doubtless we should find these laws as simple as they 
are divinely grand, could we by some process of discovery 
comprehend them; we perceive the detailed working of 
these laws, and we see the complex operations of minor 
laws, which are probably the effects of simple laws acting 
under different conditions. 
For example, the study of Meteorology, which appears 
in its present infant state little more than a multitude of 
statistical records of the most complex character, is being 
made reducible to fixed laws, and time, doubtless, will 
provide for this new born science sufficient data upon which 
to form definite rules from which conclusions can be de- 
duced. 
Medicine, in its scientific aspect, is a study bearing a 
close resemblance to Meteorology. The data from which 
conclusions can be logically derived are of so uncertain 
and shifting a character, that the greatest difficulties have 
been experienced in the attempt to- render the study of 
medicine a science. Until recently it has been practised 
almost wholly as an art, and when rules of practice have 
been given, they have been little else than empiricisms. 
Each individual practitioner had to depend upon his own 
experience and observation. The discovery of the cir- 
culation of the blood by Harvey raised the veil from 
many obscurities, and explained many actions formerly 
regarded as of a most complex character. Modern inves- 
tigation, by means of the microscope, is explaining at the 
present time difficulties formerly considered unfathomable. 
One great feature in such discoveries appears to be the 
simplicity of the first law. The law of gravitation dis- 
covered by Sir Isaac Newton is the most striking example 
of the simplicity of a great law—yet the effects of this law 
in the universe are as multifarious as wonderful. 
The laws which govern inorganic matter appear to follow 
an unvarying plan. The apparently erratic movements of 
comets, the convulsive upheavings of the crust of the 
earth, and other changes, are probably the effects of cer- 
tain unascertained fixed laws. It is absolutely necessary 
for the existence of organised matter that these laws should 
remain unchanged. Unless the earth rotated on her axis 
at a certain inclination, and with perfect regularity, the 
present vegetable and animal kingdoms could not exist. 
Many examples might be given of a correspondence be- 
tween the time of rotation of the earth upon its axis and 
periodical functions of the organised world. Linnzus gave 
